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Posts Tagged ‘Art Spiegelman’

Curated by artists’ artist Keith Mayerson, the neo-NeoIntegrity (or post-NeoIntegrity) migrates from Chelsea to SoHo, where, 15-20 years ago, it would have been in the capitol of the art world. The first incarnation at Derek Eller Gallery in 2007 felt like the Justice League Satellite, a zero-gravity chamber of unimpeachable art that surely anticipated Reporta Smith’s recent summoning for “art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand.” And this show does, too.

Inside the gallery at MoCCA (the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art), the show seems as far from Chelsea as Narnia, Gotham City, or Krypton, despite the presence of the Chelsea canonized Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Ellen Berkenblitt, Carroll Dunham, and Peter Halley. And has the Whitney been by to see the Ad Reinhardt collages?

Generously funded by School of Visual Arts, a longtime fount of cartooning and illustration talent, Keith’s massive project includes over 200 artists and four or five times as many drawings, paintings, sculptures, and videos. Hot! The tiny gallery is packed from floor to ceiling, and you really have to watch your step, too.

The bifocals crowd might struggle with the abundance of 10-pt handwritten text extruded throughout the paneled pages, and there is enough black-and-white action to make any newspaper’s editorial page see red. But that just means that it’s even more of a knockout to see full-color from chromo sapiens such as Dana Schutz, David Sandlin, and John Wesley. An “Adults Only” section designed by artist TM Davy includes grown-up material ranging from suggestive homoeroticism and explicit T&A to downright obscenity – more, please! Here, you’ll find a really beautiful and moody package from James Siena and a multivalent Shel Silverstein that gazes inward, outward, and downward, all at once.

Gold-Medal winning illustrator Yuko Shimizu, SVA MFA '03

More pictures to come after the rain subsides, but the photos today are from the opening reception last week.

Robert Breer A Man and His Dog Out for Air, 1955 Free radical, loose lines merge and amalgamate into a squiggly nebula that looks like an ant. It continues to transform contorts into the image of a portly man walking his dog. They continue up the side of the frame and lose their form until returning to the sidewalk.

Ibn al Rabin six comics from his collection, Cidre et Schnapps, 2001. Shapes arguing about eac other, consuming each other, and being consumed by Cannibal Frames.

Lew Trondheim Bleu 2001 Amoeba a blue amoeba advances on, then eats, a gold star, like Pac-Man. It regurgitates the star, then finds a version of itself in gold. They mate in a swirling vortex that looks like a tajitu.

Silent Pictures brings to the James Gallery at CUNY Graduate Center some of the most vital imaginations found throughout a three-year call for entries. They come from North America, western Europe, and Australia. Many are American; almost none are women. In her catalog essay, James Gallery Director Linda Norden reveals that no women replied to the call. (Why have there been no great women comic-book artists?)

The show also displays selections from Art Spiegelman’s library of wordless comics; and it features a film program for those who really might want to dig for precedents of abstract sequential images.

Francis Bacon, Man with Dog, 1953

But the segment of Robert Breer’s A Man and His Dog Out for Air, 1955, is absolutely silent. That’s because the film strips are unspooled and sandwiched over a lightbox. Frame by frame, we witness loose lines inch toward each other, until they amalgamate into a squiggly scribble that looks like an ant, life-sized. The restless line continues to transform, until it contorts into the image of a portly man walking a dog. The whimsical cartoon straddles abstraction and representation, something and nothing, like a time-based Kandinsky.

“A line is a dot that went for a walk,” said Paul Klee, whose ghost coexists here with Brakhage’s spirit, leaning against the wall that bears Billy Mavreas’ Border Suite, 2008. Reminiscent of drawings from Klee’s Bauhaus, the work looks like comic panels that imploded into fractal regenerations of themselves.

Billy Mavreas, Border Suite, 2008

At a glance, Klee’s Bauhaus colleague, Josef Albers, is apparent in the polychrome plans of Squares within Squares, 2007 by Mark Gonyea. And Jason Overby, from Oklahoma, could be their diligent protégé. His studious, tiny notes in Apophenia, 2008 say things like, “A linear structure is created by an abstract binary opposition. Pencil lets flaws in and is not binary (unless you’re thinking conceptually).” Shazam!

Mark Gonyea, Squares Within Squares, 2007

Ibn al Rabin exhibits six comics from his collection, Cidre et Schnapps, 2001. They are hilarious and brilliant.

In Rabin’s pages, geometric shapes argue with each other, consume each other, and get ambushed in ruthless panelcide. Funny pages, but they also offer a study of the means by which they exist and the conventions that define comics, in general.

Ibn al Rabin, The Cannibal Frame, 2001

I would focus on other examples, but too many candidates are hung too high for much evaluation. Many of the drawings and inkjet prints are intimate in scale and rich in detail, so lord knows why the work is hung salon-style, climbing up the walls like your friendly neighborhood you-know-who. So the walls imitate a comics page? But the gallery walls already compartmentalize the space like panels on a page. Whatever; viewers are advised to bring platforms.

Renée French, Straw Dog no. 44, 2009

Renée French is one of the few women in the show, but her colossal drawing Straw Dog no. 44, 2009 is enough work for several people. If we accept it as multiple drawings, then that adds to the show 29 drawings made by a woman. And because the multi-paneled drawing echoes the window panes of the gallery, and vice-versa, the work echoes throughout the space.

(l-r) Renée French, Art Spiegelman, Mark Stafford Brandi

Andrei Molotiu tells us in his catalog essay, “‘Abstract’ here is specific to the medium of comics, and only partly overlaps with the way it is used in other fine arts.” Still, Mark Stafford Brandi gives us A History of Composition in Abstract Comic Covers, 2001 – a collection of painted collages on masonite panels, one for each ism, trend, and movement from the last few milennia.

Mark Stafford Brandi, A History of Composition in Abstract Comic Covers, 2009

SVA faculty member Gary Panter is in the show. You can read more about his work in this Artforum piece by Andrei Molotiu.